What is creative evolution?

Henri Bergson, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Henri Bergson answers

Creative evolution is the recognition that life is not the unfolding of something already given, but the continuous invention of genuinely new forms — and that time, far from being an indifferent container through which change passes, is the very substance of that creative process. Consider what it means for something to be truly new. Those who speak of mechanism or finalism both, in their different ways, suppose that the future is deducible from the present — either as the deterministic consequence of prior causes, or as the realization of an idea already conceived.

In either case, the creations of life are supposed to be predetermined, time being thus unavailing.1 But pure experience suggests nothing of the sort. Life transcends finality in precisely this sense: of a free action or a work of art we may say that they show a perfect order, and yet they can only be expressed in terms of ideas approximately, and after the event.2

The vital is in the direction of the voluntary, and what is voluntary is, by its nature, unforeseen before it occurs. The image I return to is the painter before his canvas. The colors are on the palette, the model is sitting, we know the painter's style — and yet we cannot foresee what will appear. We possess the elements of the problem; we know in an abstract way how it will be solved; but the concrete solution brings with it that unforeseeable nothing which is everything in a work of art.3

And it is this nothing that takes time. The time taken up by the invention is one with the invention itself — not an interval that could be shortened without altering the content, but a vital process, something like the ripening of an idea.4 Contrast this with the child reassembling a puzzle. The reconstruction was instantaneous in principle — the picture was already created, and the operation requires only recomposing what is given.

Theoretically it requires no time at all.5 That is precisely the image of mechanism and of finalism alike: the result pre-exists its realization, and duration adds nothing. Real evolution is the opposite: to accelerate or retard it is to modify it entirely within, because its content and its duration are one and the same thing.6 The élan vital — the vital impetus — is the name for the force that drives this creative movement forward.

It is not a mysterious substance but the image of something felt internally as indivisible while being perceived externally as divisible to infinity; it gives the idea of that real and effective duration which is the essential attribute of life.7 Along the principal lines of evolution — instinct and intelligence at their extremities — what was originally one simple reality has diverged into tendencies that are now incommensurable with one another.8

The impossibility of forecasting the forms which life creates in their entirety, by discontinuous leaps along the lines of its evolution, is not a gap in our knowledge; it is the mark of genuine creation pressing forward through time.9 What creative evolution ultimately requires of philosophy is the refusal to treat the possible as something pre-existing the real, waiting to be realized.

A free act does not exist, not even in the form of the purely possible, prior to its realization.10 To perceive this — as we must with any creation, novelty, or unpredictable occurrence — we have to get back into pure duration. Duration is not the frame within which creation happens; it is what creation is made of.

Sources

  1. Whether you embrace the doctrine of pure mechanism or that of pure finality, in either case the creations of life are supposed to be predetermined, the future being deducible from the present by a calculation, or designed within it as an idea, time being thus unavailing.
    The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, p. 111
  2. In its highest forms, it is more than finality, for of a free action or a work of art we may say that they show a perfect order, and yet they can only be expressed in terms of ideas approximately, and after the event.
    Creative Evolution, p. 275
  3. The painter is before his canvas, the colors are on the palette, the model is sitting—all this we see, and also we know the painter's style: do we foresee what will appear on the canvas? We possess the elements of the problem; we know in an abstract way, how it will be solved, for the portrait will surely resemble the model and will surely resemble also the artist; but the concrete solution brings with it that unforeseeable nothing which is everything in a work of art.
    Creative Evolution, pp. 399–400
  4. The time taken up by the invention is one with the invention itself. It is the progress of a thought which is changing in the degree and measure that it is taking form. It is a vital process, something like the ripening of an idea.
    Creative Evolution, pp. 399–400
  5. The reconstruction was, moreover, instantaneous, the child found it ready-made, when he opened the box on leaving the shop. The operation, therefore, does not require a definite time, and indeed, theoretically, it does not require any time. That is because the result is given.
    Creative Evolution, pp. 399–400
  6. Radical indeed is the difference between an evolution whose continuous phases penetrate one another by a kind of internal growth, and an unfurling whose distinct parts are placed in juxtaposition to one another... Its content and its duration are one and the same thing.
    The Creative Mind, pp. 15–16
  7. by the indivisibility of what is felt internally and the divisibility to infinity of what is externally perceived, give the idea of that real and effective duration which is the essential attribute of life
    The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, p. 111
  8. instinct and intelligence, which reach their culminating point at the extremities of the two principal lines of animal evolution, must therefore be taken one with the other, before their separation: not combined into one, but one in the beginning
    The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, p. 111
  9. the essential one, namely the impossibility of forecasting the forms which life creates in their entirety, by discontinuous leaps, all along the lines of its evolution
    The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, p. 111
  10. They seem to have no idea whatever of an act which might be entirely new (at least inwardly) and which in no way would exist, not even in the form of the purely possible, prior to its realization. But this is the very nature of a free act.
    The Creative Mind, pp. 15–16